Gary Clennan wrote:
Superb! Care to briefly share some of your PP technique for this image?

Thanks for the comment Gary -- I would be happy to go through the PP process.

Firstly, this was shot at 14mm. The closest rocks in the foreground (red one on the right side of the frame) is about a foot from the lens. I had to focus stack the first ~5 feet of foreground to keep it sharp (4 shots for this). I used one double processed shot for the midground (everything but the foreground rocks and the sky). I probably didn't need to double process this but I wanted ultra clean shadows in the dark tree areas. I used a separate shot for the sky (2 stops darker) and then another shot for the stars. So in total, there are 7 different shots here.

I started getting everything as close as possible with lightroom. I worked on the midground shot first since it contains most of the image. I got this where I wanted and then copied most of the settings over to the other images (minus the star one of course). Then I tweaked the sky image until I got it more or less where I wanted it.

I used Helicon focus to combine the 4 images for the foreground. Then I exported the sky image and the midground image into photoshop and worked on the blend. This took a bit of time to get everything nice and clean and I redid it several times using different luminosity masks until I was happy with the result. After the blend was complete, I merged it with the focus stacked foreground image from helicon focus.

I now had something pretty decent to work with. I went back into lightroom and worked on the star shot -- basically just adjusted the white balance / tint / contrast until I got the desired look. I used a little luminance noise reduction because the star shot was shot at ISO 5000 (I forgot to dial it back down when I switched from my 24-105 to 14mm earlier that morning). Once I was happy with that I exported it to photoshop and merged it with my master image.

I then proceeded to tweak the master image in photoshop until I was happy with the final result (mostly local adjustments via masked curves / levels / dodging & burning). At some point I brought the double processed raw file in to lift the shadows in the trees a bit also.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something but that is the jist of it. I hope that helps

Steve Dublanko wrote:
Thanks for the comment Gary -- I would be happy to go through the PP process.

Firstly, this was shot at 14mm. The closest rocks in the foreground (red one on the right side of the frame) is about a foot from the lens. I had to focus stack the first ~5 feet of foreground to keep it sharp (4 shots for this). I used one double processed shot for the midground (everything but the foreground rocks and the sky). I probably didn't need to double process this but I wanted ultra clean shadows in the dark tree areas. I used a separate shot for the sky (2 stops darker) and then another shot for the stars. So in total, there are 7 different shots here.

I started getting everything as close as possible with lightroom. I worked on the midground shot first since it contains most of the image. I got this where I wanted and then copied most of the settings over to the other images (minus the star one of course). Then I tweaked the sky image until I got it more or less where I wanted it.

I used Helicon focus to combine the 4 images for the foreground. Then I exported the sky image and the midground image into photoshop and worked on the blend. This took a bit of time to get everything nice and clean and I redid it several times using different luminosity masks until I was happy with the result. After the blend was complete, I merged it with the focus stacked foreground image from helicon focus.

I now had something pretty decent to work with. I went back into lightroom and worked on the star shot -- basically just adjusted the white balance / tint / contrast until I got the desired look. I used a little luminance noise reduction because the star shot was shot at ISO 5000 (I forgot to dial it back down when I switched from my 24-105 to 14mm earlier that morning). Once I was happy with that I exported it to photoshop and merged it with my master image.

I then proceeded to tweak the master image in photoshop until I was happy with the final result (mostly local adjustments via masked curves / levels / dodging & burning). At some point I brought the double processed raw file in to lift the shadows in the trees a bit also.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something but that is the jist of it. I hope that helps ...Show more →

Very nice. Impressive process and an impressive photo from my favorite spot. Good job. Thanks for sharing. Scott